


A Threaded Belief

by BadWolf256



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-04-26 13:22:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14403006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadWolf256/pseuds/BadWolf256
Summary: Where do arguments lead? To simple answers and worse betrayals, but she was never supposed to believe him.





	1. Seeing Snow(Prelude to Insomnia)

**Author's Note:**

> **Author’s Note: This is a fic that I’d been planning on doing for a _very_ long time. It’s Snily- Duh, but it’s also extremely AU, so if that’s not your thing, go ahead and leave now. I have a lot of this written already, and I will be trying to stick to a thrice-weekly update schedule, but I am a student, and I do have an outside life, so if that doesn’t end up happening, just remember, I have no intentions of abandoning this story. At this point, it’s kind of my baby. I don’t like to starve my children. That being said, let’s just jump right into it! **
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> **Song of the Chapter: Year of Silence, _Crystal Castles_.**

_There is a long silence at the end of the hall. Where once he sat a throne lies empty, she thinks, there is the smell of flame in the air, and in the flame, energy returning to the state it once inhabited. She thinks, it is a good burning, and she wakes, she wakes to feel his arms around her, as cruel and cold as the snake bites seared onto the small of her back._

_There is a smell of burning here, too. It is thicker, more real in reality. If she squints climbing out from the bed with its’ canopy of black roses and crisped parchment, the emerald blaze leaps to reach her hand. It twists around her thin wrist, filling her with warmth and fear and protection. He is asleep, still, so she can send it out, a hushed whisper of a patronus. She will have to practice more, when she gets home, locking things away. It is barely opaque anymore. Just the nameless outline of a doe, spirited away to Hogwarts on the coolest breath of wind. He is awake, now._

_What does he say to her, that morning? What does he do to her body? She will not tell him when he asks. It is not her job, anymore. Ask Albus, she wants to tell him, or the grave of my sister with its’ faded, warped flowers, or the day my patronus was not even transparent. These are the things she does not tell him._

_Oh, my Severus._

_She is not there yet._

He walks through the door with his hair tied back, he never used to do that at school, and the others, they watch him as if they cannot quite believe that he has changed, that he has left those books in stacks and droves behind him, locked them in reading trunks that were thrown into the lake. The Dark Arts, he tells himself now, they will not lead me anywhere. They will not lead me closer to the truth. There is no truth. Only war and fighting. 

They tease him still. Joking little jests, welling up around him. They serve only to strengthen his walls. Sirius Black, looking almost as handsome as he did in school, when the girls would fight to throw themselves at him like the waves hitting the beach in summer, all those waves in all those Muggle documentaries. James Potter, unkempt. Remus Lupin, staring out the window with unseeing eyes. It takes from him, too, the war, so he will go to sit there, stare out the window, pass a cigarette back and forth. They watch the ashes fall like snowflakes. Still he stares unchanging, here in the middle of July, says only,

“Albus asked for you. He says there’ll be a raid this summer.” 

“It’s summer already.” 

He sighs, takes the cigarette. 

“Albus says he sees snow.” 

He does not bother saying, then Albus should learn how to see, considering the circumstances. 

“If you waste my time, Lupin-” 

“I won’t. If Albus sees snow…” 

“Then Albus sees snow.” 

“Then Albus sees snow.” 

In the middle of July, but then, he’s always seeing things like that. Locked up in his office all day long, they call him the Rebel King. We are all Dumbledore’s Army, he thinks, except some of us, some of us aren’t. He doesn’t think about them, what he’ll do when he sees them in battle. 

“Lupin told me you saw snow.” 

“Ah, yes, my boy. Come in. Lemon drop?” 

He takes one out of civility, slips it into his pocket when the older wizard isn’t looking. 

“This morning, Severus, I saw it. It worries me, to be frank. Eat your lemon drop.” 

“Not hungry.” 

It is the closest Albus comes to smiling in months. 

“You haven’t seen snow, have you?” 

_Whatever it takes, he said_

“Of course I haven’t. We have Seers for that.” 

“An imprecise magic.” 

“An imprecise argument, my boy, I thought you knew better than this.” 

“Sybil Trelawney is a joke.” 

He picks up a piece of tinfoil, crumples it in between his palms, speaks to it in a wordless language, it melts and coalesces.

“Sectumsempra.” 

It is divided. 

“Showing off, Severus?” 

Twinkling once more. 

“Keeping my wits about me.” 

“Moody would be proud of you.” 

No, he thinks, no, Moody would be disappointed.

“Why did you ask me here, really?” 

“I thought it was obvious. I needed to make sure that you’d be able to fight.” 

“And am I?” 

“As able as you ever were. You know, I’ve always had to choose my soldiers carefully. There are some who make it easy, and some who make it hard. There are many among us who’ve advised me against trusting you.” 

He nods. Who is he to disagree with the master of minds? 

“But to tell the truth, I love the challenge. There’ll be a raid. I don’t know when. Soon. I’ll send my Patronus, Severus. Be there.” 

It reforms. 

“Tell me, do they know that you put Veritaserum in the lemon drops?” 

There comes no answer, only a thickening silence, one which betrays the betrayal. No room left in this world for trust. But Albus trusts him, he supposes, trusts all of them and then some, and the Dark Lord trusts the ones who went to him, so there is room for trust only in the blinding light and crippling darkness, it suits him as badly as it suits her, doesn’t it? 

_Certainly, they don’t trust her there, either. When she looks out the window, to the north, to Hogwarts and its’ brightly writhing banners. She sees it licking up the sides of them, turrets crumbling to dust, certainly, this was the path she chose. It is the path she chooses now, turning down the steps, her hair is brushed and pinned with the snakes he stole from those Muggles, the ones who cowered from her, the ones who come back to her in the dark. Bellatrix is waiting for her at the end of the stairs._

_“He doesn’t want to talk to you.”_

_“He doesn’t want to talk to you, either.”_

_She is a worse snake, hissing._

_“Then he gives me two things more than you.”_

_“Mudblood.”_

_“Fanatic.”_

_Pressure in her chest wills them closer, one step then two, hands tangle in hair, pins are ripped, she feels the hot knife blade of the other woman’s fingernails scalping her. They pull away._

_“Severus was right about you.”_

_She smiles, then._

_“Why do you think I came?”_


	2. Insomnia-The First Night(Prologue to Something)

_They sleep in different cities. His eyes are cast out and downwards, the faintest burst of gold in the air. Somewhere down there Gryffindor’s won the latest Quidditch match, set off fireworks into the darkening sky._

_Cokeworth, in the distance. A town shaped like a beer bottle, like the graveyard of a mill. Spired and many layered imaginings bloom out of sewage drains, clawing their way up and over streets streaked with sawdust. On the far side of things, she stares at the caved in ceiling with eyes wide and fearful, hands twisted into his bedsheets. A calendar on the wall counts down the days until. Cokeworth, a town for those who never leave, and it’s been taking her sleep with it._

_Fearsome visions come with the paper that steals it, thieving in the open light of day._ Ministry of Magic Infiltrated _, reads one paper, and oh, but it has been for months! Proclaims another,_ Dementors Turn Sides _written in a manner to compete, as all journalists must do now, having no hope of competing with the Dark Lord himself. Older, yellowed papers have fallen to the bottom of the stack, their edges smudged and moulding, a dank smell of welcome comfort._

_Mould._

_It sits here at every crack and crevice, remnants shattered and spores flown across country lines, through the gridwork of bathroom tiles and geometric fantasies of open-faced floor plans. The smell itself inviting her into her bedchamber, where the eiderdown lies ripped at even intervals. Stashed inside those narrow slashes are the necessary items, tools and trinkets and a passport to leave England, back in the days when there was hope of not being valuable enough to be tracked down. Money secured in stacks held with ziplock ties. Jewelry and parchment, novels and ink, packets of pencils from a store with a shorted out neon sign, number two. Primary school reports, a birthday card and a lighter. She sleeps, if she sleeps, on the floor. Too much above that’s not worth breaking._

_She lies in a different house tonight, but her eyes are as open as ever. She stares at the caved in ceiling with eyes wide and fearful, hands twisted around his bedsheets. The air, it smells of mold still. Also of old things, heirlooms granted consciousness, and throughout the Amortentia fumes, lacings of lavender and bubbling cauldrons and sharpened spearmint._

_This, then, is insomnia._

__And on the other side, running through hills wooded, thick with crunched autumn leaves. Blood runs deep through the rivers here. It is a place for darkness. Of this he is sure, as he is sure that what she leaves behind when she goes is left quite by accident, the fear of being caught warring with the need to be noticed. Entirely on purpose._ _

__Screams rise out from the western edge, somewhere, a tree of a man is being felled, gurgling on his own thick accent. He is begging for something, but Severus cannot make out the words. You should not have come here, he thinks, what he wants to tell her every time he sees her stupid, beautiful face. The fighting, it is not your place! Another one falls. He does not know the name this time, cannot hear the accent, but he is sure the logic remains the same. Running still, time comes for his own wand to fire, a stream of lightness that cannot ease the knotted tension in his chest._ _

__They were children, not too long ago._ _

__In red and green tangles the words come out, meeting crosswise in midair like Christmas paper. The presents this time should not be half so rewarding._ _

_She wonders if he knows what it is to wait for him. It would feel different, perhaps the same as him, waiting for her to depart when the sear of the Mark leaves, a cool ghost against her skin. He will not give her the satisfaction of being discovered._

_Already it is too late. Retired into a darkness, constellations marred by a miasmic cloud-cover, the sun illuminates no grander destiny. Even ten minutes from now is uncertain. She wonders, if he dies, if the Mark will rip her apart from the inside and destroy her for her cowardice on this task that he had set for her, or simply fade, never to be seen or felt from again. She thinks, if he dies, she will feel nothing at all._

Nothingness is invasive. Laughter rings through the cool-dark ears, and he can tell that it is close to ending, now. Twice he has tripped over body parts strewn through the thicket. Blood hangs in tiger-stripes down the sides of his uniform. Face to face with one of them- _Rookwood, the name comes_ \- shooting off a _Stupefy_ , deflecting near-certain death with a _Protego_ , dodging the less-improbable variation of that circumstance. Narrowly. Potter is silent, as always, and Rookwood falls. HIs fingers itch to dig the ditch right there, dragging himself away only intensifies it. Yet tonight, tonight there will be no time to bury the dead. 

He’d like to think Dumbledore would be honored that he tried. 

He does not see Potter again until mid-afternoon, when a table is set out in the clearing, and a witch with one eye and long, dirty fingernails- _Marlene McKinnon, half-blinded during the skirmish at Yorkshire, the name comes_ \- washes her hands in a woodland spring, shared with a deer close to a doe. He tears his eyes from it, and Marlene tends to the ones whose health would be worth her effort. 

Much later, coming through his front door, he will see his blanket folded up too neatly, his room treated like some temple of worship, it will come to him like the names do, a laugh to stifle. 

Neither of them slept that night. 


	3. Something(Before Failing)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... It's taken me forever to update this. A lot happened in my life after I started this that prevented me from writing, but I'm getting back on track now. Expect regular updates from this point on, 2 or 3 a a week.

**In the village of Slyth-Adareen there lives a girl with sapphire eyes that see farther than light or darkness. Her hair hangs in lank, greased waves, and the sapphires are in need of a polish.**

**Her home is sparse.**

**It bears the air of once-loved, picture-frames coated over with dust, cushions with exposed white stuffing poking out sit on the termite bitten chairs in the tea parlor. A single china cabinet sits, black and imposing, with half of a key broken off into the lock. Inside lie unspeakable horrors.**

**Only in her bedroom are the signs of life, the ceiling painted over with fruits and flowers and symbols in unknown languages, drawn with lazy flicks of a willow dark wand. She traced over them herself, with the tenderest of gestures, blazing flecks of gold coming off. _I want your life to be beautiful._ Half of a glass vase sits on the night table, melted together in the middle with bone-white porcelain, so that one cannot tell where the glass ends, or the porcelain, or the charcoal roses spitting off their midnight ash. _I want your life to be as good as mine is_ It looks a scarred survivor on its own. _If this is what that looks like, then your life must not be very good._ **

**No, the house is the sum of its’ visitors, the men and women who crowd into the maze of walls and ceilings of the upper floors. Men from England and Portugal and France, men with letter openers for fingernails and rusting copper noses, men with taped up wands and men who twist the edge of a knife beneath the table. Women with elegantly curled ringlets, eyes full of artificially brewed tears. Potions, she thinks. She would’ve been good at Potions. They come, and they stay awhile, giving news and taking it like the ebb and flow of the tide.**

**Her name is Petunia Evans-Black, and this is her safehouse.**

It is Sunday, the seventeenth of October, and Severus Snape’s come for tea. 

He’s best dressed, a dark, mossy scarf bringing out the humanity in his eyes, hidden deep. Underneath this his uniform, ironed impeccably, as all his clothing is. Petunia thinks he rather treats his clothing like his friendships: Rare things, so absent in his youth that in his present they must be treasured all the more. She finds, staring at his tall, dark form, hugged by the navy fabric, gold buttons gleaming, that she doesn’t mind too much. He looks, in fact, rather like Regulus had: Humbly impressive. 

“Petunia.” He says, and in a practiced motion she tugs the scarf from his neck, watching it whip and curl into her outstretched hand, “You haven’t been taking care of yourself.” 

“Sit.” 

“Why haven’t you been-” 

“Sit, Severus, and tell me what the Order’s been doing. We don’t get many of your lot anymore, what with the emergency.” 

He sits, looking around him again. Desolate, this place is. Like his house. Like hers. It is, after all, wartime. And still the same as ever, Petunia is. Each month, without fail, he knocks on her door. Each month, without fail, it is made clear to him, in so many ways that come even when silence has fallen, that it is only through their mutual loss that his feet are allowed to cross her threshold. He is treated to the coldest, most sorrowful looks these long, drafty Sundays, when the wind seems all the more ready to burst the glass from the paper-thin windows. Drinks from the oldest, dirtiest of the grimed over aquamarine china. 

She lets him in for the gossip. 

“The Order, I am sure you will understand, isn’t keen for their plans to be spoken in settings such as these.” 

“Well of course it isn't. How do you think I know what it is in the first place?” 

“Your husband.” 

“Please.” 

“It’s a logical assumption to make.” 

“Regulus wasn’t a fool. Oh, he wasn’t a fool about the Order, not when he was home, at any rate, did you know that he would look me in the eyes, every night when he came home from work, and lie to my face about it?” 

“No.” 

“You wouldn’t. So do tell me, how is _darling_ Sirius doing?” 

“Sirius has been better.” 

Petunia sighed, fixing Severus with the most fake glance of pity he had ever been subjected to in his life, before saying, in a manner that suggested it didn’t, 

“It hurts my heart dreadfully to hear that, Severus. We’re related, you know.” 

“I am aware.” 

“Then I’m sure you also know how distraught he was at his dear brother’s funeral. Why, I think he cried near as much as I did!” 

“More, I am sure.” 

Petunia shot him a glare.

“Near as much as I did, practically begged me to keep this place running. So you see,” She finished, “As this place is a safehouse, I really should have all the necessary information to make it safe.” 

“And you believe, somehow, that by omitting our current activities we are denying you this information? How… Foolhardy an assumption.” 

“If I’m not apprised of what’s going on in your world, how will I be able to protect your people?” 

She is all business, now, friendly pretense vanished. 

“If you are not apprised of what’s going on in your world, then you’ll not have to trouble with it. I wouldn’t see why you would feel the need to, given your disinterest in anything remotely magical during your youth.” 

“My late siste-” 

“It could be for Muggles.” 

She stares at her, blinks, but only once. 

“Muggles need safety too.” 

“Of course-” She regains her composure in record time, the mark of a lifelong neighborhood spy, “Of course they do. There’s room here for everyone.” 

“Petunia Evans.” He says, the words hissing and spitting themselves out over his tongue. He knows, even as he says them, that he won’t be allowed back next month, “What would your sister say, if I told her that you betrayed your world?” 

**Upstairs, where the tunnels road in and out, upwards and downwards, a sign hangs to cover the address. 12 Grimmauld Place is a veritable haven, if they’ll have it. For the last few years, they have. Petunia busies herself, cleaning, cooking, avoiding the hint of her husband's’ eyes that she can see in between the wedged shadow of door and invading room. These days, it is harder.**

**Newspapers litter his study floor, spilling out from that last shrine of reverence, where on nights long and lonely she will climb into his chair, wrap around her his still-warm uniform. The newspapers, too, are sacred. They are long memorized, weeped over. Two articles, printed and reprinted at the corner store, where poor Bessy Mayfield gave a smile to that poor, grief-dulled widow.**

**Regulus’s obituary, and the announcement of Lily’s turning.**

**They are the only people Petunia will allow herself to cry over.**

“I would imagine the same thing you said when they told you that she had betrayed yours.”


End file.
